Stinky Tofu, by Alyson Fusaro
Photo by Daniel Honies on Unsplash
Every few months Mom made a trip to Kam Man Market to restock the pantry essentials: bottles of fish sauce that stunk like Bruce’s football socks, shrimp paste that smelled of sweet fermentation, among an abundance of other condiments that would make all my classmates pinch their noses. But the worst stench was stinky tofu, which I can best describe as an ode to rotting foot odor. After a restock trip, Mom always made a pit stop at the Taiwanese restaurant next to the market and fueled up on her faves while also taking an order of that fetid tofu to-go, so our small suburban house reeked when she popped those suckers onto the frying pan.
“Want to try a piece?” she’d ask Bruce and me while the sizzling stink bombs shot hot oil all over the stove top. If we were cartoon characters, the putrid cloud would have wafted under our noses and knocked us stiff like planks of wood, with X’s over our eyes, deceased from the odor that she inhaled like she’d just spritzed jasmine air freshener.
“I’d rather die before sticking that in my mouth,” Bruce would say. As his sister, I had to make a crude joke that would’ve gotten a bar of soap stuck in my mouth if Mom had heard, but it was always worth the risk when he left himself open like that.
Last year, my friends came home with me after school one day, and I did not anticipate the perfume of funky feet to hit us when we stepped through the door. It actually made them gag, worse than the time we stumbled upon a cat’s corpse baking in the noon sun of August. They looked at me for an explanation. But what was I supposed to say? Sorry guys, my mom sure loves herself some stanky tofu. They wouldn’t get it, they didn’t grow up eating chicken feet for dim sum (not that stinky, but quite tasty) or chive and egg dumplings (also very tasty, but very farty smelling). They ate ham sandwiches and creamed corn casseroles, the kind of food that made you lick your chops like a dog getting sight of a T-bone steak.
I got them back outside before further assault on their noses could be committed and I made a beeline to the kitchen where the perpetrator stood at the stove, refrying that devil-forsaken tofu.
“Mom, what are you doing?” I said, and I’ll admit, my voice was a bit testy. Normally I would never talk to her like that, but I was in a P.R. crisis and I needed to figure out how to save face before my friends thought I lived in a perpetual stink hole.
“What does it look like?” she said with an edge to her voice. “And watch your tone.” I had approached her too fast and heavy; she was in tiger mom defensive mode.
“I mean, why are you making that right now? It smells bad here. I told you Laura and Sabrina were coming over after school.”
She side-eyed me and all she could say was, “I remember.” All problems and no solutions with her. I went up to my room, but boy, oh boy, did it reek of unwashed jock straps up there, and it wasn’t Bruce’s football equipment. I ran down to check the basement but the odor penetrated there as well, so there was no escaping mom’s after-work snack.
I went back to her. She was cutting up fresh red chilies and, to make it worse, she was concocting some soy-infused oyster sauce and raw garlic potion to put on top of her tofu.
“Mom! Why?” I couldn’t help but whine, I was being a petulant toddler. How long could I make my friends wait outside for? We were supposed to study for our history test and then watch a movie on Netflix.
“What?” she snapped like a twig. I put too much pressure when I stepped on her brittle nerves. “If you don’t like the smell then go somewhere else. You always criticizing, always asking, Why you never make casserole like Laura’s mom? Why you always cook with fish sauce? Why you have to eat stinky tofu? Why this, why that, I’m tired of you complaining. Go live with Laura if you want white food that much!”
I got out of there quicker than a jack rabbit bolting from the mouth of a dragon. Bruce was standing by the door with his big, snoopy nose, and he smiled at me with those eyes that said, you got yourself in deep shit.
I told Laura and Sabrina that my mom was decontaminating an old container of country fried steak that she found sitting in our backyard, and if something like that sat through a Louisiana summer, then that thing would stink worse than that tofu. But I don’t know why I lied or how on earth I thought my lie sounded better than the truth. I guess I was too embarrassed to admit my family ate differently from theirs, that my mom missed Taipei and so she ate stinky tofu sometimes, that it was her favorite snack from the night markets and it reminded her of home. I ate bologna sandwiches at school, went out for pizza and ate bland casseroles at friend’s houses all because I was a snot-nosed, fourteen-year-old conformist.
We ended up going to Laura’s house and ate saltless chicken and steamed broccoli because her mom was on a new low-sodium and carb-less diet. I wondered if salt and pepper were too spicy for them. We watched Sixteen Candles and I left absolutely judging Laura’s mom for recommending that garbage. I almost entered an existential crisis when I realized I went up to bat for someone who thought the stereotypical characterization of Long Duk Dong was “a hoot.”
I got home, and my mom was in the living room watching The Joy Luck Club (her go-to movie whenever she was upset) and she looked like she was about to give me hell since she had four hours of brooding to ferment in, but I went up to her before she could open her piehole and I gave her the best hug I had ever given, the kind where you squeeze the person like a giant teddy bear and they feel how earnest you are. She didn’t know how to compute the situation. I was never one to try to make amends after an argument (or a scolding), but she wrapped her arms around me warmly and rubbed my back.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I said.
“It’s ok baby girl, Wǒ ài nǐ.” I love you, she told me.
The TV flickered behind us and it felt like we finally got each other, or at least I
understood her better because she had a hard time deciphering my angst and the inner workings of high school drama, but it’s crazy what a hug can do for family morale. She was feeling misunderstood, which I could relate to. And as a mature person, I can admit that it wasn’t fair of me to shame her for missing home; she just needed a taste of belonging.
And you better believe I never said a single bad word about her tofu again, even when she made the stinkiest sauce your brain and nose could think up. When bubble tea shops started popping up everywhere and I began seeing everyone sipping on chunky straws nearly choking on tapioca pearls ‘cause they couldn’t guzzle it down fast enough, I was owning that like I invented it myself, telling everyone, “Hey, you know that’s from Taiwan, right? That’s my mom's country.”
The TV flickered behind us as we hugged, and who would’ve thought we’d be made closer by the stench of stinky tofu hanging in the air.
Alyson Fusaro is a half Taiwanese-American currently living in Brittany, France. She is a Hunter College alumnus who majored in English literature and creative writing. "Stinky Tofu" is her debut fiction publication.